Not Ready for Primetime

It took nearly 30 minutes, but S.N.L. finally gave the people what they wanted: Melissa McCarthy as Sean Spicer. There have been murmurs this week in Washington D.C. that after several rocky months serving President Donald Trump, Spicer’s job is in extreme peril. The last thing he needed was to be made a mockery of on S.N.L. Alas, poor Spicer, we barely knew ye.

McCarthy and the S.N.L. writers didn’t go gentle on the embattled press secretary, kicking off the sketch with this week’s most meme-able image: poor Spicer crouching in the bushes. McCarthy then delivered rants from behind the podium with her usual degree of gusto and violence.

But when the show’s versions of the press question Trump’s loyalty to Spicer, the sketch takes a turn. McCarthy not only zoomed her podium around the streets of Manhattan to the tune of Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Only Living Boy in New York”—she potentially put the nail in Spicer’s coffin. If Trump was reportedly incensed over a woman like McCarthy playing his press secretary, how do we think he’s going to take this one?